He was silent. They were on the top of the ridge. A little beyond stood the dusky group of their companions. And the world lay beneath them.
"Who would live in London who might live here?" said the major.
"No one," answered Hester and Christopher together.
The major turned and looked at them almost in alarm.
"But I may not," said Hester. "God chooses that I live in London."
Said Christopher,—
"Christ would surely have liked better to go on living in his father's house than go where so many did not know either him or his father! But he could not go on enjoying his heaven while those many lived only a death in life. He must go and start them for home! Who in any measure seeing what Christ sees and feeling as Christ feels, would rest in the enjoyment of beauty while so many are unable to desire it? We are not real human beings until we are of the same mind with Christ. There are many who would save the pathetic and interesting and let the ugly and provoking take care of themselves! Not so Christ, nor those who have learned of him!"
Christopher spoke so quietly there seemed even a contrast between his manner and the fervour of his words.
"I would take as many in with me," he said, turning to Hester, "as I might, should it be after a thousand years I went in at the gate of the sunset—the sunrise rather, of which the sunset is a leaf of the folding door! It would be sorrow to go in alone. My people, my own, my own humans, my men, my women, my little ones, must go in with me!"
Hester laboured, and Christopher laboured. And if one was the heart and the other the head, the major was the right hand. But what they did and how they did it, would require a book, and no small one, to itself.